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Nintendo Records Best Holiday Selling Season in U.S. Video Game History

U.S. sales figures released by the NPD Group confirmed a red-hot launch for Nintendo's new Wii system, and the crowning of the portable Nintendo DS as the best-selling video game device of any type for both the holidays and all of 2006.

Along with success for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and historic sales of accessories, including more than 1.5 million extra controllers for Wii alone, Nintendo recorded the most successful across-the-board holiday performance in U.S. video game history.

Among key results:

Consumers purchased every Wii console available at retail -- more than a million in just the 44 days between U.S. launch and year end.

With sales of another 1.6 million systems in December alone, Nintendo DS achieved full year sell-through of 5.3 million.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was purchased by an extraordinary 86 percent of Wii buyers, or more than 900,000 games for that system alone. Coupled with the companion version released in December for Nintendo GameCube, the two versions of the newest Zelda title totaled approximately 1.5 million unit sales in less than seven weeks, which would represent one of the five best-selling games for the entire year.

Wii owners also purchased an average of three additional games from a wide library of choices, in addition to the Wii Sports title packed in with every hardware system.

Two Nintendo DS titles, New Super Mario Bros. and Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day, also were top-10 sellers for the year.

Throughout the November/December holiday shopping period, Nintendo accounted for more than half of all video game hardware systems sold in America.

Earlier this week, Nintendo increased its projected worldwide financial performance for the year ending on March 31 to be the best in company history.

"Millions of players, both hard-core and brand-new, are already enjoying the unique entertainment provided by Wii, but demand for the system remains incredibly high," says Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime. "So our work is just beginning. We're dedicating ourselves to maximizing both manufacturing and distribution full bore throughout 2007, to make sure everyone who wants to experience the future of video gaming can do so just as soon as possible."

The momentum behind Wii will continue unabated through the early weeks of 2007, with retail debuts of WarioWare: Smooth Moves, Wii Play and Mario Party® 8 from Nintendo; a host of third-party releases; and a steady stream of classic games made available via download with the Wii Shop Channel.